Jockey raped and killed his sister-in-law and claimed it was suicide - now Olympian he dated for a year reveals how 'kind and charming Johnny' beat and threatened to kill her and why it was 'excruciating to leave' him

Daily Mail​

6 hours ago

An Olympian whose abusive ex-boyfriend would go on to rape and murder another woman has revealed how leaving him was 'the hardest thing' she ever did.
Olympic dressage rider and horse-trainer, Abigail Lyle, from Bangor, Co Down, was 23-years-old when she got together with charismatic jockey-turned-trainer Jonathan Creswell - who would kill showjumper Katie Simpson, 21, a decade later.
Now the story of Katie's murder is set to be told in an upcoming three-part Sky documentary, Death of a Showjumper, prompting Abigail to open up about the details of her relationship with killer Creswell.
After meeting at an equestrian event in Belfast, Abi and Creswell, from Greysteel, Co Derry, became a couple, and were in a relationship for around nine months between 2008 and 2009.
Creswell charmed everyone he met, and if anybody suspected that his wide smile and knowing strut masked a profoundly sinister side, then they said nothing.
But despite his charming exterior, during their relationship, Creswell inflicted a barrage of physical and emotional abuse on Abi, now 40 - so much so, that her father put her in touch with police domestic violence officer Nuala Lappin to help her leave him.
Abi initially refused to cooperate with Nuala, blaming herself for herself for Creswell's rages.
Among his attacks, she has described being taken to woodland where Creswell kicked, punched and strangled her, threatening to dump her body as she fought to stay alive, aware of the devastating grief that would engulf her parents, who had lost her brother three years earlier.
'I was thinking, "Don't let him kill you because your parents have already lost a child and they can't lose another one",' she said.
She added that she saw 'red flags' at first - like Creswell taking phone calls from other women, during which he'd lie about being with Abi. He also checked her phone, and criticised her after she had spent time with family and friends, saying he didn't like her personality after socialising.
Then in February 2009, Creswell assaulted Abigail for the first time after they'd had an argument and she had left to go out with friends. He later messaged her, apologising for the row, asking if he could pick her up.
She told the Irish Times that when she got in his car, Creswell purposefully swerved right, ensuring her phone flew out of her hands, telling her she wouldn't be needing it.
Abigail added: 'Out of nowhere he grabbed the back of my head, he hit my head off the window, off the dashboard. I was like, curled up, and he just hit me over my body, over and over and over.'
She said that she'd previously thought she would defend herself if attacked, but that a 'crazy instinct' took over, and knowing that she couldn't win a physical fight with him, she would do anything to try and calm him down.
Creswell eventually started apologising, saying he loved her - which Abigail described as an 'unbelievable' relief, and 'like oxygen'. His apologies took away the pain instantly, she said - until the next time he would attack her.
Only when Creswell threatened to dump her in a bath of bleach – which could end her riding career – did Abi pluck up the courage to leave.
She explained this by saying that the only thing she wanted more than him was to ride horses, so she escaped and used a pay phone to call Nuala for help.
Creswell was subsequently charged with a series of offences, among them false imprisonment, kidnapping and threats to kill, all of which he denied. But in 2010, Creswell finally pleaded guilty to common assault and ABH and was jailed for six months.
According to Nuala: 'Johnny's version of events was that he was Abi's saviour, that she was mentally unstable and that she would sit in the car and punch herself in the face.'
She added that Creswell tried to flirt with her and another female officer as they questioned him.
Although he had faced some punishment for his crimes, when Creswell was freed, he emerged to a hero's welcome, greeted by a party attended by 30 friends, most of whom believed that Abi had made up her story to try to get compensation.
Despite his abusive and violent behaviour, Abigail says she was conflicted after leaving the relationship, telling the Irish Times she questioned whether she had done the wrong thing.
She told the outlet that she was 'filled with so much fear. So much self-loathing' after extricating herself from Creswell.
She described feeling 'so alone', and believing all the bad things her abuser had said about her.
'I remember at that point just feeling so lost. The anxiety – constant, absolutely crippling anxiety, because you had this person, who you loved, who has stripped you away completely. And now you are alone.'
A decade after the abusive relationship with Abigail, Creswell would go on to commit an even more heinous crime - raping and murdering Katie Simpson, the 21-year-old sister of his then-girlfriend - before claiming she had taken her own life and that he had tried to save her.
According to Abigail, after leaving jail, Creswell 'just picked up where he left off'. He was soon in a relationship with Christina Simpson, one of six siblings from Tynan with whom he went on to have two children.
However, unbeknownst to anyone, while in a relationship with Christina, Creswell was simultaneously grooming her younger sister, Katie, who was just nine when she first met him.
'He controlled and coerced Katie since she was a child,' Detective Sergeant James Brannigan, the officer instrumental in bringing Creswell to justice, told a court hearing.
No one knows when his relationship with Katie became sexual, although some locals noticed that the young horsewoman seemed terrified of Creswell hearing suggestions that she might get a boyfriend.
'Don't go saying anything like that in front of Johnny,' a family friend, Chris Faloon, recalls Katie pleading with him after he suggested another showjumper might be keen on her.
Nonetheless, a few weeks before she died, Katie had embarked on a relationship with a showjumper called Shane McCloskey, who is not named in the documentary but was identified by the Mail last year.
The extent of her fear of Creswell was exposed in a frantic exchange of messages with McCloskey, in which she begged him to lie about the fact they had spent the previous night together if Creswell got in touch.
'He'll kill me,' she wrote.
And indeed, after finding out, Creswell viciously beat and raped Katie in a violent rage, before calling the ambulance service to say he had returned from dropping off his children at his mother's house to find Katie hanging from the banister of the family home.
He insisted on attempting to take her directly to Altnagelvin Hospital in his car to avoid paramedics visiting the house. At Katie's bedside, he behaved as though distraught, shaking and weeping.
But not everyone believed Creswell's story, with some nurses noting the bruises on her body.
DS Brannigan described the injuries on Katie's body as 'shocking', adding: 'Her hands were like boxing gloves, they were that swollen and bruised. There were marks on her legs, on her inner thigh, there was a massive bruise on her shoulder, a small cut to her lip and bruises on her arms.'
It was not just Creswell who was trying to protect himself from accusations that he was responsible: it emerged that he was engaged in a number of sexual relationships with other women, including Katie, and three of those women lied to try to cover up for him.
One of them, Rose de Montmorency-Wright, 22, had lived with Katie, Creswell and Christina, and had helped carry Katie's coffin at her funeral.
The others were Jill Robinson and Hayley Robb, those friends of Katie's who also loved riding and were part of the her horse set.
Creswell had put about a story that Katie had fallen while riding the day before the attack to try and explain away her injuries - a story supported by Jill and Hayley.
DS Brannigan remained unconvinced, but by the time Katie died six days later, having never regained consciousness, Creswell had managed to create the narrative that Katie had taken her own life, and local police seemed uninterested in investigating.
According to journalist Tanya Fowles, who knew Katie and was suspicious about her death, when she rang police to alert them to Creswell's previous convictions for violence, a Derry police officer accused her of being a 'curtain twitcher'.
DS Brannigan, who worked in County Armagh but had been contacted by Fowles to see if he could help, recalls how he was similarly stonewalled, with Derry detectives telling him Katie had tried to take her own life twice.
As he later discovered, they had mistakenly logged two suicide 'attempts' – the first when she arrived in hospital and the second when she died from her injuries.
It would take six months of dogged work by Brannigan – and questions from Katie's relatives – for Derry police to finally open an investigation.
Internal swabs taken during the post mortem, which previously had not been examined, came back showing Creswell's semen - providing police with enough evidence to arrest him.
He tried to lie his way out of the situation, claiming he had been in a relationship with Katie since she was 17 and that they'd had sex several times the night before she'd gone to hospital.
But he proved that his story couldn't be true when he drew a diagram to show police how he had found Katie, describing her as 'kissing the wood' - by which, DS Brannigan explained, Creswell meant Katie was facing the inside bannister from which she was hanging.
The length of the strap she had purportedly hung herself with was not long enough for her to be in this position, detectives discovered when revisiting the scene.
Brannigan described this as a 'eureka moment', adding: 'We could see Katie did not die this way.'
On March 6 2021, Creswell was charged with Katie's murder – the first of what would prove to be several criminal charges in relation to her death.
In the following weeks, the extent to which the three women had tried to help cover up the crime emerged.
CCTV footage showed Hayley Robb following Creswell's car home from hospital before entering his home then leaving with a bag and placing it in the boot of her own vehicle.
She subsequently admitted that as Katie lay dying, she and Robinson had taken Creswell's clothes to a launderette. Robb had also cleaned up traces of blood in the house.
Rose de Montmorency-Wright was subsequently arrested in England and brought back to Northern Ireland for questioning.
Brannigan says: 'She admitted to us "Yeah. He told me he'd beaten Katie". And I said "Why didn't you tell us?". She said she believed Katie had taken her own life and didn't believe it was relevant. I pushed her on it, but she asked to speak to a solicitor and when she came back she wouldn't say anything.'
She subsequently pleaded guilty to withholding information, and received an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.
Jill Robinson received a 16-month suspended sentence for perverting the course of justice, and Robb two years, suspended for two years, for withholding information and perverting the course of justice.
Katie's sister Christina, whom police also believed was subject to coercive control by Creswell, was not prosecuted.
Loyal to the end, Jill Robinson, who visited Creswell in prison when he was on remand, confides that she felt she had 'let Johnny down' by telling the truth.
It subsequently emerged he was facing a catalogue of allegations from more than a dozen other women, among them a teenage girl who had spoken to police about being abused by Creswell.
Sadly, Creswell would never face justice for his actions: at 9am on April 24, 2024, one day after the prosecution had outlined their case at his trial, his body was found at his home.
Speaking now about her experience with Creswell, Abigail Lyle credits Nuala Lappin with saving her life, telling the Irish Times the domestic violence police officer's advice is 'probably why I am here today'.
Abigail added that Nuala was the 'only person' who understood why it was so difficult for her to leave, supporting her until she was ready.
When the Olympian heard Creswell had been arrested for Katie's murder 11 years after she'd left him, she said she was not surprised, but was devastated, noting that she'd always felt he was capable of that kind of crime.
Abigail also shared advice for those concerned about someone they know who is in an abusive relationship, recommending they let that person know they are there for them, and don't judge them.
And for those in this kind of relationship, she encourages them to reach out for help, and know they are not alone - and that there is 'an amazing life' waiting for them on the other side.